{"id":26355,"date":"2016-06-02T01:04:14","date_gmt":"2016-06-02T08:04:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/06\/these-tiny-spacecraft-could-lead-us-to-alpha-centauri"},"modified":"2017-06-04T10:18:37","modified_gmt":"2017-06-04T17:18:37","slug":"these-tiny-spacecraft-could-lead-us-to-alpha-centauri","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/06\/these-tiny-spacecraft-could-lead-us-to-alpha-centauri","title":{"rendered":"These Tiny Spacecraft Could Lead Us to Alpha Centauri"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/these-tiny-spacecraft-could-lead-us-to-alpha-centauri.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Earlier this spring, Russian billionaire Yuri Milner casually <a href=\"http:\/\/gizmodo.com\/a-russian-billionaire-and-stephen-hawking-want-to-build-1770467186\">announced<\/a> his intention to develop spacecraft that can travel at up to 20 percent the speed of light and reach Alpha Centauri within twenty years. From the outset, it was clear that no humans would be making the warp jump\u2014the mission will involve extremely lightweight robotic spacecraft. A new fleet of tiny satellites hints at what those future interstellar voyagers will look like and be capable of.<\/p>\n<p>Meet Sprites: sticky note-sized devices that sure <em>look<\/em> like the result of the Pentagon\u2019s long-anticipated <a href=\"http:\/\/gizmodo.com\/inside-the-us-nuclear-silos-where-floppy-disk-are-still-1568609439\">floppy disk purge<\/a>, but are in fact state-of-the-art spacecraft complete with solar cells, a radio transceiver, and a tiny computer. Later this summer, a Cornell-led project called <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kickstarter.com\/projects\/zacinaction\/kicksat-your-personal-spacecraft-in-space\/description\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Kicksat-2<\/a> will launch 100 of these puppies to the International Space Station. There, the satellites will spend a few days field-testing their navigational hardware and communications systems before burning up in orbit.<\/p>\n<p>The project\u2019s lead engineers, Zachary Manchester and Mason Peck, are on the advisory committee for Breakthrough Starshot, an ambitious effort to reach our nearest neighboring star system within a generation. (In fact, the potato chip-sized computer Milner held up during a <a href=\"http:\/\/gizmodo.com\/watch-live-as-stephen-hawking-deliver-a-mysterious-anno-1770489990\">highly publicized press conference<\/a> in April was Manchester\u2019s own design.) Sprites, and the \u201cchipsat\u201d technology they\u2019re based on, are a step toward that goal of interstellar travel. More generally, they\u2019re an indication of the future of space exploration.<\/p>\n<p><!-- Link: <a href=\"http:\/\/gizmodo.com\/these-tiny-spacecraft-could-lead-us-to-alpha-centauri-1779820881?utm_medium=sharefromsite&utm_source=Gizmodo_facebook\">http:\/\/gizmodo.com\/these-tiny-spacecraft-could-lead-us-to-al...o_facebook<\/a> --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Earlier this spring, Russian billionaire Yuri Milner casually announced his intention to develop spacecraft that can travel at up to 20 percent the speed of light and reach Alpha Centauri within twenty years. From the outset, it was clear that no humans would be making the warp jump\u2014the mission will involve extremely lightweight robotic spacecraft. [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":354,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1523,9,6,2028,1633,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computing","category-military","category-robotics-ai","category-satellites","category-solar-power","category-sustainability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/354"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26355"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26355\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61675,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26355\/revisions\/61675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}